Ali Twelvetrees
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dozenoaks.bsky.social
Ali Twelvetrees
@dozenoaks.bsky.social
Sir Henry Dale Fellow | Sheffield | cell & molecular neurobiology | kinesin, dynein, slow transport and neurodegeneration | preferably one molecule at a time | my opinions | she/her
Doggo was making her feelings known about Sunday morning grant writing… I put the laptop down to wrestle her off and the cat has now taken up the defence. Sigh.
September 21, 2025 at 7:08 AM
Poster boards are ready and waiting for #NeuroBioUK - let’s get this science party started 🥳
September 12, 2025 at 7:37 AM
Cooling off after a hot day, Sheffield style. Here’s to the weekend! Don’t forget to get those abstracts in for #neurobiouk25 :)

neurobiouk.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/registration
July 11, 2025 at 7:45 PM
Friday gave us a double treat at our Single Molecules seminars. Fab talks from @annestraube.bsky.social and ECR speaker Dylan. Between them they covered AFM, optical trapping and TIRF assays - serving fascinating insights into photosynthesis and microtubule transport. Single molecules FTW!
June 19, 2025 at 10:02 AM
Aaah - summer in Sheffield 🌞
June 8, 2025 at 1:17 PM
Registration is now open for NeuroBioUK 2025!
This year we're looking forward to hearing from our plenary speaker @cathyabbott.bsky.social. As ever, all other talks chosen from submitted abstracts so get submitting - we can't wait to see you there!

neurobiouk.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/registration
June 6, 2025 at 3:17 PM
A recent selection of found cats for #caturday, separated by a few hundred years and a few thousand miles…
May 17, 2025 at 9:58 AM
Fantastic talk from @mathewhhorrocks.bsky.social for our Single Molecules @ Sheffield seminar series. Really creative applications of single molecule confocal systems for neurodegenerative disease research. Safe travels back to Edinburgh :) Thanks again to our sponsors @biochemsoc.bsky.social
May 15, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Has anyone mentioned to the PM that a healthy life sciences sector is critically dependent on a healthy university system? One that includes humanities and arts that can deal properly in ethics and human experience? Taken from Starmer’s speech today -
April 7, 2025 at 4:09 PM
Birthday rhubarb - I am Yorkshire now
March 23, 2025 at 10:23 AM
Feeling totally shattered tonight after the presentation of a lifetime - my 10 year old’s year group. Kiddo is proud of me and not embarrassed of her mum (!!). The classes asked amazing questions - the true test that anyone followed anything I said. And now I am ready for bed!
March 13, 2025 at 8:19 PM
Good morning from the sleepy bees at Sheffield Botanical Garden. Guess it must be spring?
March 8, 2025 at 10:11 AM
Do you need some science joy in your life? Do you like neurons? Maybe glia? Molecules? Cell biology? Save the date for #NeuroBioUK25 - the venue is booked and we are excited to see you and your incredible science there on the 12th of September!

neurobiouk.sites.sheffield.ac.uk
March 6, 2025 at 7:57 AM
I could spend today in an existential crisis about the future of the world, or I could science… 🔬
March 4, 2025 at 12:24 PM
Beautiful start to the day in Sheffield this morning…
February 6, 2025 at 9:12 AM
With all the optimisation we got great reproducible smFRET data. If you’ve got access to one of these instruments and a regular TC facility, then all you need is a couple of wells in a 6 well plate and you can have enough protein to test out what’s going on in a sensitive biophysical assay! 7/10
January 17, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Evie then optimised labelling time and concentration of ligands in our HEK cell expression system using in-gel fluorescence. CLIP is known to have much slower labelling kinetics than SNAP, but with this careful optimisation Evie got past this hurdle. 6/10
January 17, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Confocal smFRET is very sensitive to contaminations, because you only want one fluorescent molecule in the confocal volume at a time. Evie used flow cytometry to optimise the wash out time of SNAP and CLIP ligands to minimise contamination from unbound fluorophores. 5/10
January 17, 2025 at 1:42 PM
We went for self labelling enzymes CLIP and SNAP because they are small and give us access to stable fluorophores. Small tags are best for FRET to maximise the dynamic range of the assay. Self labelling enzymes avoid having to deal with issues from fluorescent protein maturation. 4/10
January 17, 2025 at 1:42 PM
We wanted to apply confocal based smFRET to see molecules freely diffusing - we thought this would be super helpful for kinesin. For this first foray we wanted to keep with simple N and C terminal tags because we weren’t sure where to safely place fluorophores by e.g. cysteine labelling. 3/10
January 17, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Still frozen here…
January 9, 2025 at 10:20 AM
Day three negotiating the ice sheet on the school run and we encountered a casualty of the conditions…
January 8, 2025 at 8:49 AM
Last day of the school holidays - up early to play in the snow before it goes slushy ❄️
January 5, 2025 at 9:29 AM
Alternative - dive in, enjoy the ride :)
November 26, 2024 at 7:17 PM
I am very guilty of reading too many of these pieces on the rise and fall of social networks - probably thanks to nostalgia - but this one is a good one. The TL;DR - enjoy Bluesky while it lasts

www.sandofsky.com/end-of-twitt...
November 26, 2024 at 2:29 PM